CHAPTER XXVI. 
THE NAKED GODDESS. 
It is not usual in Chaldean art to find a female figure unclothed. In a very 
early period we have a naked goddess accompanying Bel-Inlil on a dragon, but 
this is exceptional and archaic. ‘There is, however, one goddess who is always 
represented conspicuously nude. Since her identification by Lenormant she has 
been called Zirbanit, the wife of Marduk; and as Marduk took the rdéle of Inlil 
in the later Babylonian mythology, so Zirbanit may be supposed to have usurped 
the place of Belit of Nippur, which would connect her with the nude goddess of 
the dragons. 
Zirbanit is represented always as standing quite nude, and usually in front 
view, with her hands together under her breasts. She is slender, and has the ap- 
pearance of a statue. Indeed, a multitude of statuettes of this goddess are found, 
but most, or all, of a late and base period. On the later cylinders in the Hittite 
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times the feminine traits are more accentuated: the abdomen and hips are larger, 
the navel is designated, the breasts are sometimes given, and the face is often in 
profile, or is left en face, but with very little delineation beyond the roll of hair each 
side of the head, suggesting the symbol of the goddess Ninkharshag or Belit. ‘The 
capillus veneris is represented by a triangle, often accentuated, as in fig. 422, and 
very much so on the later statuettes. This nude goddess does not make her appear- 
ance in art until after the time of Gudea, perhaps not before that of Hammurabi. 
She is never figured in any special relation to another deity. We can not there- 
fore assume that she is the consort of any god, that is, from the art-evidence. Occa- 
sionally she appears alone with a worshiper, as in fig. 423, but this is not usual. 
In fig. 424 we see her associated with a number of emblems of gods, the crescent 
of Sin, the thunderbolt over a bull representing Adad, the caduceus (probably of 
Ishtar), and a dancing figure. More usually she is associated with a number of 
gods. Such a case is fig. 425, where Ramman and Shala are the principal figures, 
and as emblems there are the sun and crescent, a fly, and a tortoise. But very 
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